BarMax Turns the Bar Exam Into Open Book

Last year, John Goldberg, a professor at Harvard Law School, and Barry Friedman, a professor at New York University School of Law, published Open Book: Succeeding on Exams From the First Day of Law School-a concise, highly accessible guide to law school exam success.”

According to Goldberg and Friedman, once a law student understands why professors create the types of exams they do and what professors look for in answers, a law student will improve her exam performance.”

Just as Friedman and Goldberg have done for law school exams, BarMax has simplified bar exam prep and made the bar exam transparent like an open book.”

As with law school exams, there are specific issues that bar exam graders look for when they are grading the written portion of the bar exam. On the essays, points are awarded when students spots the issues that the bar examiners have built into the fact patterns of the questions. On the performance tests, points are awarded when students completes the assigned tasks. By writing about the correct issues and finishing the assigned tasks, a student will maximize her score. On the other hand, when a student writes about non-issues (i.e. issues not triggered by fact patterns) or does not follow the directions on a performance test, the student will score fewer points.”

It is also important to note that each issue or performance test task is only worth so many points. This means it does not matter how many words a student uses to answer a question or how long a student takes to complete a task. As such, spending too much time on a particular issue or task may be counterproductive. If all the points can be obtained with a few well-chosen words, writing more only means that you are not maximizing your time. For example, if only specific rules need to be applied to an issue on an essay question, a student that recites everything she knows on that topic (i.e. 'the kitchen sink approach') may run out of time.”

With BarMax bar exam review courses, by the time students take the bar exam, they will be so familiar with the subjects tested, patterns of testing and grading process, that the bar exam will be like an open book test.”